Frankincense Essential Oil – Healing the Ancient Way

Frankincense (Boswellia carteri) trees were considered extremely valuable during ancient times and their location was often a matter of state secret. Egyptians used the incense to fumigate their homes, for ritual incense and the oil for cosmetics. It was used as a holy anointing oil and as a general cure-all for all diseases. It was also used to enhance meditation and elevate spiritual consciousness. History shows it was used for embalming and as a perfume AND formed an important part of the Sabbath day offering. Frankincense or olibanum was mentioned in the Scriptures over 50 times and is found in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Chronicles, Nehemiah, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Matthew, and Revelations.
The actions of frankincense include anti-inflammatory, anti-tumoral, immune-stimulant, antidepressant and muscle relaxing. It stimulates the limbic system as well as the hypothalamus, pineal and pituitary glands. It is strongly anti-viral, antioxidant, antifungal, antibacterial, antiseptic and expectorant oil. Frankincense has the ability to relax and revitalize at the same time.
Cancer Research Using Frankincense
There are a few researchers studying the effects of frankincense on various cancers with some degree of success. In vitro effects show inhibition or stimulation of cell proliferation depending on the concentration of frankincense oil in the growth media. A recent study conducted at the University of Oklahoma showed that frankincense kills bladder cancer cells without harming surrounding tissue.
Studies are showing frankincense to be a strong immune-stimulant with some claiming that frankincense has the ability to repair DNA. A Chinese study conducted in 2000 indicated that Boswellia has “anti-carcinogenic and anti-tumor activities.” These boswellic acids from frankincense inhibited “a variety of malignant cells” in people suffering from leukemia and brain tumors. The Cancer Research Institute of the University of Nevada treated cervical cancer with frankincense, in which “there was 72% inhibition and growth of non-cancerous cells.” Other studies have shown that boswellic acids from frankincense exert antiprolifertive activity toward a variety of malignant cells. Another study showed that boswellic acids are potent apoptotic agents to cancer cells and another one shows that Boswellic acids from frankincense gum exhibit potent cytotoxic activity against CNS tumors.
Why Hasn’t the General Public Heard about This?It sounds incredulous but the anti-cancerous effects of frankincense has been known for thousands of years. Does it work for everyone? No, but compared to the effects of chemotherapy, frankincense DOES show great promise now and in the future. Frankincense will never be promoted for the breakthrough that it is because there is no money to be made in its promotion. Frankincense is expensive in comparison to other therapeutic grade oils but “cheap” in comparison to drugs like chemotherapy.
Want to learn more about frankincense and other essential oils that can keep you healthy? The Institute of Spiritual Healing and Aromatherapy teaches classes throughout the United States on both aromatherapy and energy (spiritual) healing. I’d like to invite you to explore our educational offerings.
And now I’d like you to claim your free instant access to a Special Report on Five Biblical Oils including frankincense when you subscribe to my free short ezine newsletter on energy healing and aromatherapy at http://www.ISHAhealing.com Look for the subscriber box on the left-hand side of the page.
From Linda L. Smith, Director of the Institute of Spiritual Healing & Aromatherapy, a national program in Christian healing.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Linda_Lee_Smith

The gift given by the wise men to the baby Jesus probably came across the deserts from Oman. The BBC’s Jeremy Howell visits the country to ask whether a commodity that was once worth its weight in gold could be reborn as a treatment for cancer.
Oman’s Land of Frankincense is an 11-hour drive southwards from the capital, Muscat.
Most of the journey is through Arabia’s Empty Quarter – hundreds of kilometres of flat, dun-coloured desert. Just when you are starting to think this is the only scenery you will ever see again, the Dhofar mountains appear in the distance.

On the other side are green valleys, with cows grazing in them. The Dhofar region catches the tail-end of India’s summer monsoons, and they make this the most verdant place on the Arabian peninsula.
Warm winters and showery summers are the perfect conditions for the Boswellia sacra tree to produce the sap called frankincense. These trees grow wild in Dhofar. A tour guide, Mohammed Al-Shahri took me to Wadi Dawkah, a valley 20 km inland from the main city of Salalah, to see a forest of them.
“The records show that frankincense was produced here as far back as 7,000 BC,” he says. He produces an army knife. He used to be a member of the Sultan’s Special Forces. With a practised flick, he cuts a strip of bark from the trunk of one of the Boswellia sacra trees. Pinpricks of milky-white sap appear on the wood and, very slowly, start to ooze out.

Boswellia sacra produces the highest-quality frankincense
“This is the first cut. But you don’t gather this sap,” he says. “It releases whatever impurities are in the wood. The farmers return after two or three weeks and make a second, and a third, cut. Then the sap comes out yellow, or bright green, or brown or even black. They take this.”
Shortly afterwards, a frankincense farmer arrives in a pick-up truck. He is white-bearded, wearing a brown thobe and the traditional Omani, paisley-patterned turban.
He is 67-year-old Salem Mohammed from the Gidad family. Most of the Boswellia sacra trees grow on public land, but custom dictates that each forest is given to one of the local families to farm, and Wadi Dawkah is his turf.
Camel train
He has an old, black, iron chisel with which he gouges out clumps of dried frankincense.
“We learnt about frankincense from our forefathers and they learnt it from theirs” he says. “The practice has been passed down through the generations. We exported the frankincense, and that’s how the families in Dhofar made their livings.”

Salem Mohammed: Young people prefer careers in oil or government
And what an export trade it was. Frankincense was sent by camel train to Egypt, and from there to Europe. It was shipped from the ancient port of Sumharan to Persia, India and China. Religions adopted frankincense as a burnt offering.
That is why, according to Matthew’s Gospel in the Bible, the Wise Men brought it as a gift to the infant Jesus. Gold: for a king. Frankincense: for God. Myrrh: to embalm Jesus’ body after death.
The Roman Empire coveted the frankincense trade. In the first century BCE, Augustus Caesar sent 10,000 troops to invade what the Romans called Arabia Felix to find the source of frankincense and to control its production. The legions, marching from Yemen, were driven back by the heat and the aridity of the desert. They never found their Eldorado.
Oman’s frankincense trade went into decline three centuries ago, when Portugal fought Oman for dominance of the sea routes in the Indian and the Pacific Oceans.

Salalah’s Haffa souk: The place to buy Omani brands such as Royal Hougari
Nowadays, hardly any Omani frankincense is exported. Partly, this is because bulk buyers, such as the Roman Catholic Church, buy cheaper Somalian varieties. Partly, it is because Omanis now produce so little.
“Years ago, 20 families farmed frankincense in this area,” says Salem Mohammed Gidad. “But the younger generation can get well-paid jobs in the government and the oil companies, with pensions. Now, only three people still produce frankincense around here. The trade is really, really tiny!”
Cancer hope
But immunologist Mahmoud Suhail is hoping to open a new chapter in the history of frankincense.
Scientists have observed that there is some agent within frankincense which stops cancer spreading, and which induces cancerous cells to close themselves down. He is trying to find out what this is.

The Catholic church mostly buys Somalian frankincense
“Cancer starts when the DNA code within the cell’s nucleus becomes corrupted,” he says. “It seems frankincense has a re-set function. It can tell the cell what the right DNA code should be.
“Frankincense separates the ‘brain’ of the cancerous cell – the nucleus – from the ‘body’ – the cytoplasm, and closes down the nucleus to stop it reproducing corrupted DNA codes.”
Working with frankincense could revolutionise the treatment of cancer. Currently, with chemotherapy, doctors blast the area around a tumour to kill the cancer, but that also kills healthy cells, and weakens the patient. Treatment with frankincense could eradicate the cancerous cells alone and let the others live.
The task now is to isolate the agent within frankincense which, apparently, works this wonder. Some ingredients of frankincense are allergenic, so you cannot give a patient the whole thing.

FRANKINCENSE FACTS
Boswellia sacra grows in Oman, Yemen and Somalia
Other Boswellia species grow in Africa and India
The tree may have been named after John Boswell, the uncle of Samuel Johnson’s biographer
In ancient Egypt frankincense was thought to be sweat of the gods
Source: The Pharmaceutical Journal
Dr Suhail (who is originally from Iraq) has teamed up with medical scientists from the University of Oklahoma for the task.
In his laboratory in Salalah, he extracts the essential oil from locally produced frankincense. Then, he separates the oil into its constituent agents, such as Boswellic acid.
“There are 17 active agents in frankincense essential oil,” says Dr Suhail. “We are using a process of elimination. We have cancer sufferers – for example, a horse in South Africa – and we are giving them tiny doses of each agent until we find the one which works.”
“Some scientists think Boswellic acid is the key ingredient. But I think this is wrong. Many other essential oils – like oil from sandalwood – contain Boswellic acid, but they don’t have this effect on cancer cells. So we are starting afresh.”
The trials will take months to conduct and whatever results come out of them will take longer still to be verified. But this is a blink of the eye in the history of frankincense.
Nine thousand years ago, Omanis gathered it and burnt it for its curative and cleansing properties. It could be a key to the medical science of tomorrow.
Jeremy Howell reports for Middle East Business Report on BBC World News.

Christmas cancer cure
By: David Bradley
Gold is certainly precious, frankincense smells nice but it was never quite obvious why the third wise man brought myrrh for the baby Jesus.
Myrrh is a yellow gum, which has for centuries been used as a herbal painkiller and for treating stomach complaints and diarrhoea. The bitter-tasting, fragrant resin has also been used for thousands of years as an ointment, perfume, incense and embalming fluid, it can even ward off bad breath.
Now, American scientists have discovered a new anticancer compound in the famously misunderstood resin of the plant Commiphora myrrha, which could make it a powerful weapon against prostate and breast cancers.
Chi-Tang Ho of the Department of Food Science, Rutgers University inspired by his late wife who died of cancer is working with chemists there and colleagues at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and Osaka City University, Japan. The researchers have discovered a property of an extract from myrrh that could make it far more precious than the other two original Christmas gifts – it is a potent anticancer compound.
The researchers have shown that a sesquiterpenoid from myrrh kills breast tumour cells in the laboratory, even those that resist current anticancer drugs. “I’m optimistic that this compound can be developed into an anticancer drug,” says Rutgers team member Mohamed Rafi, although he concedes that the compound is yet to be tested in animals or humans.

Frankinsence is still used today, but production has declined massively. Image by Meena Kadri
The ancient Egyptians were well aware of the properties of Frankincense, and used it to treat phlegm, asthma, throat and larynx infections that bleed, and for calming down vomiting. The inhalation of the melted stem relieves both bronchitis and laryngitis. But new research by immunologist Mahmoud Suhail suggests that it may contain properties that could cure cancer. Could the knowledge of the ancient Egyptians be scoured to revolutionise cancer treatment today?
Frankincense is grown in green valleys, on the other side of the Dhofar Mountains that catch India’s summer monsoons, making the area a paradise in the Arabian Peninsula. Boswellia sacra was produced there as far back as 7000 BCE, locals say. Almost as long ago, the ancient Egyptians began importing the substance. The journey from what is now Oman to ancient Egypt must have been made millions of times by ancient caravanserai.
The Egyptians had many uses for Frankinsence. The kohl, which the Egyptians painted their around their eyes, and which was also effective as a eye treatment, is made of melted frankincense (the charred remains of the burnt frankincense was ground into a black powder), and other resins. They used it as a depilation agent, blended it with other herbs into a paste to perfume the hands. In colder weather Egyptians warmed their bedrooms with a fire infused with frankincense and also aloe wood. In fact the word ‘incense’ originally means the aroma given by the smoke of any odourific substance when burned.
Evidence of Frankincense
On the Ebers Papyrus several prescriptions use resins as ingredients for treatments. On the ‘Treatise of Tumours’ section of my work Oncology and Infectious Diseases in ancient Egypt: The Ebers Papyrus? Treatise on Tumours 857-877 and the cases found in ancient Egyptian human material, incense is prescribed in prescription number 861, and in the section about liver diseases, in prescriptions 477, 478, 479, 480.
The use of frankincense is reported in the embalming ritual is described in two Papyri, dating from the Greco-Roman period: Papyrus Bulaq 3, housed in Cairo, and Papyrus 5158, in the Louvre. The ancient Egyptians used incense oil along with fragranced resins. Boswellia africana and arabica was used in the embalmment process, as was the Sudanese Boswellia papyrifera. The resin worked as glue, to help the linen bandages adhere.

Incense burner from Nubia. Image by Marie-Hélène Cingal
In Isis and Osiris, Plutarch comments that Egyptian priests burn incense three times a day: incense (pure) at dawn, myrrh at noon, and kyphi at sunset. Kyphi was a compound of incense used in ancient Egypt for religious and medical purposes. The mixture was rolled into balls and burnt in hot coal to exhale its perfume.
The Harris Papyrus I has a record of a donation and delivery of plants and resins for its manufacture in the temples from Ramesses III. He describes how the 16 ingredients of kyphi were mixedtogether whilst sacred writings were chanted.
Plutarch adds that the mixture was used as a potion. All kyphi prescriptions mention wine, honey and raisins. Other ingredients include cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum), cassia (Cinnamomum cassia), aromatic rhizomes from cypress (Cupressus sempervirens), cedar, juniper berries, incense resins, myrrh, benzoin resin, extracted mainly from Styrax benzoides and Styrax benzoin (which would have been imported to Egypt from Asia), and mastic gum.
Searching for the Magic Ingredient
Now, immunologist Mahmoud Suhail from Iraq is teaming up with more scientists in Oklahoma to find out how some agent within frankincense stops cancer spreading, and which induces cancerous cells to close themselves down.
“Cancer starts when the DNA code within the cell’s nucleus becomes corrupted,” he says in an interview with the BBC. “It seems frankincense has a re-set function. It can tell the cell what the right DNA code should be”.
In his laboratory in Salalah, he extracts separate oils from locally produced frankincense, then he separates the oil into its constituent agents, such as Boswellic acid. In the BBC interview, he says:
“There are 17 active agents in frankincense essential oil. We are using a process of elimination. We have cancer sufferers – for example, a horse in South Africa – and we are giving them tiny doses of each agent until we find the one which works.”
What was used yesterday with so many applications related to the general well-being of people can now be researched as a probable ingredient for a cure for cancerigenous cells in the people of today and tomorrow.

But immunologist Mahmoud Suhail is hoping to open a new chapter in the history of frankincense.
Scientists have observed that there is some agent within frankincense which stops cancer spreading, and which induces cancerous cells to close themselves down. He is trying to find out what this is.
“Cancer starts when the DNA code within the cell’s nucleus becomes corrupted,” he says. “It seems frankincense has a re-set function. It can tell the cell what the right DNA code should be.
“Frankincense separates the ‘brain’ of the cancerous cell – the nucleus – from the ‘body’ – the cytoplasm, and closes down the nucleus to stop it reproducing corrupted DNA codes.”
Working with frankincense could revolutionise the treatment of cancer. Currently, with chemotherapy, doctors blast the area around a tumour to kill the cancer, but that also kills healthy cells, and weakens the patient. Treatment with frankincense could eradicate the cancerous cells alone and let the others live.

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About Mama

I'm a seeker of truth in all forms, a natural foods cooperative coordinator, an herbal medicine user, an organic gardener, a natural skincare maker, a soapmaker, a homesteader, a goat midwife, an essential oils advocate and seller, a voracious book reader, a home educator, a bible student, and most importantly a wife and mama.